The papal protection often developed later into exemption from episcopal authority. Since the eleventh century, papal activity in the matter of reforms has been a frequent source or occasion of exemptions; in this way the monks became more closely bound to the popes, as against the bishops, many of whom were often inimical to the papal power.

More than just the rackmount version of the original POD, the POD Pro had much more features including double the number of amp models (32), cabinet models can be changed from front panel, manual mode (instead of presets) is handy for many players as it's the what-you-see-is-what-you-get mode where all the tones are reflected by knob positions. In addition to the 1/4" input and stereo outs of the original Pod, the Pro features a line-level input, an unprocessed output, a TRS stereo effects loop, balanced XLR outputs, two flavors of digital outputs (S/PDIF and AES/EBU), and a digital clock input.